"What needs to be said about JSF is that it is intended for GUI builder tools. Its benefits won't be clear until at least on vender has the tool ready."

That's what I fear the JSRs and JCP have become about: A way for vendors to propose overly complex "standard" that are impractical to hand code, so they require you to use tools that they just so happen to be more than willing to sell to you.

This ridiculous shunning of simplicity in pursuit of "standards" and design by committee tempts me to take a peak at what .NET is all about. Having work with excellent "non-standard" tools, like WebObjects, leads to believe that proprietary can be much better than what comes out of committee.